In general, a wearable robot for assisting muscular strength of the lower extremity refers to a robot that is developed based on humanrobot synchronization to be worn by a user to help waking of the user by assisting the strength of the user's legs.
Although such a wearable robot for assisting the muscular strength of the lower extremity originates from rehabilitation assistants for degenerative muscular disease patients, there are many attempts in recent years to apply the wearable robot to muscular strength assistants for the elderly, soldiers wearing battle equipment, workers carrying heavy loads in work sites, surgical patients, medical patients undergoing longterm hospitalization, and the like.
As a result, various wearable robots usually worn around the knee joint of a user have been developed to assist the muscular strength of degenerative muscular disease patients or the elderly. However, wearable robots for work sites or the like have yet to be realized in practice.
For use in work sites, the wearable robot for assisting the lower extremity must be used along with a robot for assisting muscular strength of a user's upper body, or must overcome problems relating to load exerted on the lower extremity of the user since a high load is generally exerted on the user and the robot when the user wearing the wearable robot carries the high load.
Further, when all joint parts of the wearable robot are active joints including drive units as in a leg of a general robot, the driver units cause an excessive increase in weight of the wearable robot and complicate the configuration thereof, thereby causing frequent malfunction.